by Finn Bell
They’re not gold ingots, they never were.
How did I not see?
Not me or Pruitt. Oh God.
My hands are still this time when I load the bullets back into my gun.
I start the car without thinking. I just need to do something. I know I should tell the twins but I just can’t bear another reasonable conversation right now. It feels better to be moving, so I’m out on the road where the speed almost feels like progress.
When I arrive at Albie’s house, I’m pulled from the numb horror of what I now know by a complicated scene of people arguing amongst a smattering of large, unpacked boxes and piled plastic wrapping. Even from a distance I can see that it’s Pruitt on the one side and the truck driver from the museum on the other, with Brumhilda trying to keep the distance between them.
“And I’m saying you got no rights to it, mate! It shouldn’t have been dropped off here in the first place but we only got the new paperwork today, see? It’s right here on the docket. Somebody from Dispatch should have called you!” says the truck driver loudly as I roll up to them.
“What’s all this then?” I ask, interrupting what has clearly become a stalemate between them, surprised at how upset Pruitt looks. It’s just old things, after all, I think.
“This gentleman from the museum says that there’s been a mistake, and that this last consignment shouldn’t have been dropped off here at all now,” Pruitt says, not even trying to hide his disdain. “He’s here to pick it up again and take it to the Zoyl farm.”
What?
“Can this be right?” I ask, looking over at the truck driver.
Who sighs and hands over the clipboard in his hand, adding, “Look, mate, that’s what it says on here. I’m calling the supervisor and you can sort it out with him.” Then he takes out his phone as I thumb through the paperwork. It’s clear that this last consignment, not many things, all of them marked as “oversize, metal” objects 1 through 9, were initially destined for here, but then the order was changed to the Zoyl address with a note saying, “see Claim Form attached.”
As I thumb through to the Claim Form at the bottom of the stack, it happens again.
Click.
Because I see that it’s stapled to a handwritten letter, specifically detailing the return of these items, including the deeding of ownership of those items, back to Sean Zoyl, and I know this is just all so very wrong.
Because Albie wrote this letter.
I’ve read so many of his history notes over the last weeks that his handwriting is unmistakable. The letter is dated February 11. This was the last thing he did before he died. Make sure these things go back to the Zoyls. It’s with jagged gratitude that I realise at least Albie didn’t hang himself, because they killed him.
And as I look up, not hearing a word that either the truck driver or Brumhilda is saying, it happens again.
Click.
Because now I know what I missed, that I’ve been missing it for all these months, every day up to now. I fucking held it in my hands! I couldn’t see the gap it made in this sea of everything that’s come after until now. That’s why they killed Albie; he always had to die. Ever since that night and morning Pruitt sat on the hill overlooking the Zoyl house when James went missing back in 1989. Except James was never really missing. And if that’s true, then that means . . .
Click.
And luckily, all the papers from the Zoyl case are still in the back of the car and I’m over there searching through them frantically.
I know I’ve seen it.
I know it’s here.
And then I find it and I check the dates and it’s all right there.
It fits.
It even has Albie’s name noted in the copy of the police file Pruitt gave me.
This is it, this is real.
As I look up, the volume of Brumhilda and the truck driver still arguing suddenly fades away in the pounding of my heart in my ears.
My breath catches as I see Pruitt walk up to it.
I can see him reaching out a shaking hand but he hesitates before he touches it and pulls back, then looks back at me and our eyes meet.
There’s a look of complete, beatific redemption on his face and tears rolling down his cheeks as he nods to me.
He has it.
We know.
Both of us know.
Here, finally, after so many years, this tragedy ends.
This secret is finally out.
We know what you did.
I’m about to roll forward when Pruitt suddenly arcs his back, his entire body shaking as if impaled by some invisible spear, before he falls heavily to the ground. The next moments are urgent flashes of panic until, finally with a purpose to all my useless adrenalin, I find myself lying down in the dirt next to Pruitt as Brumhilda and I frantically try to perform CPR on him.
He looks so different already, so pale and covered in sweat, and he’s got deep, blue, almost purple rings under his eyes, and he’s not breathing and we can’t find a pulse.
“Pruitt! God, no, not now. Pruitt, come on! Wake up!” I yell over Brumhilda saying things to me in the background.
I don’t know if Pruitt is dead or dying, but I know they’ll have to pull me off him because I can’t stop, I can’t.
I don’t know how long it is that we just keep going, but I can feel Pruitt’s skin grow cold as I push and push on his bare chest before finally the ambulance arrives and the paramedics take over. I keep wanting Pruitt to open his eyes but he never does.
And then the ambulance is gone. I turn onto my back, lying there, utterly exhausted, next to my wheelchair in the dirt. I can hear Brumhilda tell Tai on the phone that he can turn back around and meet us at the Riverton hospital because the ambulance is already on the way.
And my mind is an empty, scraped-out stutter inside my skull.
As Brumhilda sits down heavily next to me on the ground she says, “Oh, what badness for the old man. I’m so sorry. And I can’t believe that driver just leaving like that, no consideration. You want I should drive us to the hospital now?”
But I’m already up on my elbows and looking around to confirm what I already know. It’s just been that kind of day—because I see the truck driver is gone. He’s loaded up his consignment and he’s probably already at the Zoyl farm.
But then I remember seeing the Zoyls head out this morning on their crayfish boat. They’ll head out up the Fiordland coast. It’ll take a few days, weather permitting, before they come back. Most trips are about four days. Now is the time, this ends today. I can be in and out in an hour, and I don’t care if I get arrested for trespassing or theft or whatever. I’m finishing this.
I hear myself tell Brumhilda, “No thanks, you go ahead. I’ll take my own car. I’ll see you there later.”
She’s locked up and on the road by the time I start my engine. As an afterthought, in a way almost true to the reason I bought it in the first place, I take the gun and put it in my jacket pocket. Just in case.
Because today I’m going back to Zoyl farm.
Click.
CHAPTER 43
June 4, TODAY . . .
Click.
It all fits, I think, as I speed along to the Zoyl farm, half-drunk on exhaustion and adrenalin and euphoric vindication mixed with near-mad anger.
All the pieces have been there all along.
We just didn’t see.
I’m going to find it, and God help me, I’m going to hold the truth in my hands before this day is out.
It’s the only thing that makes sense. The Zoyls didn’t have time the second time around. They knew when they killed James that the police would be coming, and fast. No time to dispose of the body. They had to hide it, and this was their best, their only option. They had everything they needed to hand. Like Albie told me, the Zoyls always were clever.
And careful and patient, I think. Because they had to wait all these years—they couldn’t do a thing until now. It almost worked, too. But for kill
ing Albie at the right time, it would have all been over.
And I’d been so wrong, so completely, about everything.
Looking everywhere but the right place.
All the old police files, and meeting the Zoyls and talking to Pruitt and Father Ress. None of it meant anything. From 1989 till now, everything was really only ever about Albie. My cats, searching my house, the fire—everything the Zoyls did was because of him. Because of what he’d done.
As I come to the closed gate of Zoyl farm, I speed up even more, hadn’t even noticed how fast I was already traveling. I keep going and smash straight through on to their own track. As the track gets rougher I make myself slow down; fighting the adrenalin, my hands shaking. There are fresh, large tire tracks in the soft soil ahead of me. I hope it is the museum’s delivery truck having come and gone.
I make myself slow down even more, at last coming up to the farmhouse, which I recognize from the pictures, even though I have never been here, and park in front of the house. Everything is as deserted as I expected, and none of the bulky deliveries from the museum are anywhere in sight. Once I’m in my chair again, I don’t bother with the house, but head straight over to the biggest shed. That’s where the truck driver would have put them. Getting the big, corrugated metal door to slide open is quite a chore in the wheelchair but I finally get one pushed back all the way.
There’s a distinct smell wafting out. It’s sweet and cloying and very familiar somehow, I think, but I can’t place it.
And there, in the bright sun falling across my shoulder into the shed, is what I’ve been looking for.
A group of new, large cardboard boxes stacked in front of the various old tools and crates in the shed. Once I have the top of the biggest box torn away, now that I know what I’m looking for, it’s easy to see.
Even now, after all these years, the colour, although faded, is still wrong. As I peer inside, I can see that it’s almost, almost right, but still not. And it’s just big enough.
Click.
Now I know how they did it. I know exactly how they went about it. They didn’t have time for anything else. Because I’d seen it happen before, long ago, in Africa. I can’t help but think back to that very first time I met the Zoyls, when they were slaughtering pigs, the sick perfection of it all.
How long have they been doing this? God.
Tai’s right, there’s badness in the land here, too much for too long. Some things just have too much sickness in them to ever be washed away. This place should be flattened, and nobody should ever come back.
But I need to see it, I need to get it open.
The first thing I find is a big hammer amongst their tools. But after a few of my very best bangs, I realise that, aside from ringing my ears, I’m going to need to do better. So I start looking again through the random, messy collection of farming equipment and boxes, and the further back I move, the stronger that sweet, familiar smell gets. It smells almost sharp and acidic, and I’m sure I know it somehow.
There.
Everything else is forgotten as I spot what I need. Not on a shelf, but hanging from a chain further into the shed. As I roll up to it, I’m relieved to see that the block and tackle of the pulley is itself set in a rail that runs along the centre of the roof. It looks sturdy enough. Pulling it over to the box is easy. After finding some rope, getting it all tied in is awkward work for a cripple, but after a few minutes, it’s done.
This has got to work.
I steadily pull down on the chain, every time using all my strength and most of my weight. It’s so heavy that it only moves by tiny increments. Inching itself up and up until at last it is creakingly suspended near the arch of the roof. I reckon it’s got to be a good 5-meter drop onto the concrete below. That’s got to be enough. Has to be, I think.
Then I whip the chain to the side and let everything crash down in a monumental, resounding bang that has me covering my ears and ducking with eyes shut.
Then with my heart pounding, ears ringing, and dust still settling around me, I see that it’s worked.
They are right where I thought they’d be.
Because here, finally, spilled out on the dirty floor of the Zoyls’ shed are the sad, brown-stained, and broken bones of James Cotter.
I reach down to them because I can’t not.
James Cotter deserves so much more than this small intimacy I can offer. I worry at first that the bones will be brittle or soft but they seem fine. And I was already expecting to find the grooves running along their sides, so they don’t upset me at all.
I want to do more but I stop myself.
Carefully, I put the few bones that I’ve held down to the side, leaving the rest untouched, exactly as they fell.
Because before this can be a tragedy, it has to be a crime.
And this is evidence, and the Zoyls, they’re going to pay.
There’s no sentence too long.
I actually hope they try and fight or run so somebody can just shoot them.
Really, I just want them all dead as soon as possible. Bastards.
It doesn’t have to be cruel or painful. This isn’t about my own sense of vengeance anymore.
I just want them to not be living, breathing people as soon as possible.
I don’t care if this makes me a bad person.
I can’t bear the thought of people like this walking around like everyone else.
You can’t do these things and still get to be people.
I’m out of the shed, having just rolled into the sun again, thinking to call the police from right here when I glance to the side and see Darrell Zoyl.
He’s standing only a few paces away, big hands grasping air, silent, his head to one side as he looks at me with that same almost hungry look. Fuck.
CHAPTER 44
NOW . . .
It feels like a very long time.
Like when you wake up in the night and you feel like it must be close to morning by now but when you check, you see you’ve only been asleep for an hour. And you blissfully realise you still have all night left and you sink back into that timeless, warm peace.
Later, much later, the dreams come, flashes of unwanted but unrelenting things.
I dream of evil fire, hot, orange, and dirty, roiling, black, oily smoke slithering all around, hungrily devouring everything good and green in the world until nothing’s left but browning bones.
Even singeing the two angels down to thin, blackened things when they come to take my tattered soul away. And I’m finally nothing.
And then floating somewhere between waking and sleeping, softly dissolving thoughts flow into one another in slow accretion, taking ages to gently merge in and out of each other until finally one whole truth rises out and I know what happened.
I know everything.
* * *
Hospital bed.
I’m awake and in the hospital but I don’t open my eyes yet.
I just need to keep still.
It’s all here, balancing in my head now, all the pieces fitting. I just need to preserve this one fragile moment, this one unique network of thoughts. To put words and logic around the truth. And as I carefully go over every link one more time, I can feel it all solidifying.
I’ve got it.
It’s all come back with me.
And I open my eyes.
“Here, have some water,” Patricia says as she holds a paper cup to my mouth and I drink hungrily. She looks tired but happy and I realise, again, that we’ve done this before at some point, probably a few times already.
“You have to take it easy, okay? You’ve taken a beating,” she says, smiling down at me.
Next to her I see the grinning face of Tai, and towering behind him the twins from Benin, looking down at me expectantly.
I see outside the window is Riverton. It is morning, and everything looks fresh and clean.
But it’s the twins my gaze is drawn back to. I remember our conversation at the Wild Food Festival and I th
ink, you really are, very, very good.
Like a fool, I had thought this was our story.
About Alice and James and about me and Pruitt and the Zoyls, and of course, I was wrong.
“I know what the second secret of monkey trapping is,” I say finally.
Both John and Lucas give me the same knowing nod.
“The first secret of monkey trapping is you cut a hole in a pumpkin just big enough for the monkey to get his hand in, but not big enough for him to get it out with a fist full of seeds,” says John, looking at me expectantly.
“The second secret of monkey trapping is that you make sure the monkey sees you doing it,” I say, feeling a slow smile spread across my face.
“Just so, Mr Bell. Exactly just so,” Lucas agrees.
“It only works with smart animals, too. Monkeys are very intelligent. The only problem with very intelligent animals is that they always believe they are the most intelligent. They are just like people, really. So even when the monkey sees you cutting the hole in the pumpkin, he still comes. He is not afraid, because he believes he is smarter than you. And that’s why you can catch them,” John finishes.
“And I was your pumpkin,” I say.
“Just so, yes, Mr Bell,” Lucas says, nodding happily. “You see, when Father Ress called us and we were assigned the case, we saw quickly that there was nothing to go on. No evidence, no leads. Like many, we had our suspicions about the Zoyls, but no proof. And we knew they were clever. But we had you. Clearly, you were their pumpkin. We didn’t know what they wanted from you or what you knew. And none of that mattered, in any case. All we needed to do was stay close to you. And make sure the Zoyls saw us with you, often. We interviewed them several times over the past months. We didn’t have any evidence or anything to go on, but they did not know that. We asked them all kinds of things, hours in the interview room, but there was never a point to any of it. And after every interview we found you again. Made sure the Zoyls saw us with you. These men, they were not afraid of us, of anything. Because they knew they were smarter than us.”
“So I was bait?” I ask.
